[521] “The essential oneness of human moral experience has shown itself in the ethical results achieved by these various peoples.”--TOY, _Judaism and Christianity_ (1891), p. 337. [522] Coulanges, _The Ancient City_, ii, 9. [523] The authority of the father over each and every member of the family was legally absolute, extending to life and death. Not until late in the Empire did the law forbid fathers to kill their grown-up children or to sell them as slaves. Cf. McKenzie, _Studies in Roman Law_, 6th ed., p. 141; and Sohm, _Institutes_ (1901), p. 53. [524] Inge, _Society in Rome under the Cæsars_ (1888), p. 8. [525] This Roman virtue of obedience to the state has been just such an enduring force in the moral life of the Christian world as has the Jewish virtue of obedience to a revealed law (see Chapter IX). Historically regarded, the Protestant Church, which makes obedience to a written revealed law a necessary virtue, is the inheritor of the ethical feeling and conviction of ancient Israel; while the Roman Catholic Church, which makes submission to ecclesiastical authority an indispensable virtue, is the inheritor of the ethical tradition and spirit of ancient Rome. See H. M. Gwatkin (co-author), _Early Ideals of Righteousness_ (1910), pp. 71 ff. [526] Tacitus, _Annals_, iii. 16, 17. [527] This legal subjection of the son to the father, while it developed and strengthened the virtue of obedience, seemed to deaden filial _affection_. “Of all the forms of virtue,” says Lecky, “filial affection is perhaps that which appears most rarely in Roman history” (_History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 299). [528] _De Off._ i. 17. [529] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 177 f. [530] See p. 245, on the ethics of persecution. [531] _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 148. [532] Cf. Chapter XVIII. [533] The citizen army, which had been the seed plot of those heroic virtues that cast such a halo around the earlier history of Rome, had been replaced by a mercenary force in which only the coarser military virtues could find sphere for exercise. [534] “The unchecked power of the master ... produced those cold hearts which gloated over the agony of gallant men in the arena.”--DILL, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904), p. 12. [535] Friedlander, _Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms_ (1888), Bd. i, S. 479–481; English ed., _Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire_, vol. i, pp. 243 f. [536] “The senator was forbidden down to the last age of the empire, both by law and sentiment, to increase his fortune by commerce.”--DILL, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, p. 102. [537] _De Off._ i. 42. [538] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 271. [539] Friedlander, _Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms_ (1889), Bd. ii, S. 414; English ed., _Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire_, vol. ii, p. 77.